Essex Food Show

Thanks to Big Spud and Essex Gourmet, I was alerted to the pleasures of the Essex Food Show on Saturday. A quick hop down to Liverpool Street to meet Ian and we were on our way to the charming White Notley, the nearest station to the show. I'm always apprehensive about food shows I don't know: are they going to be full of manky faux local food that actually comes out of multi-national factories - or are they the genuine article? Thankfully, apart from the trouser press guy and some dubious mass produced bottled goods, the Essex Show was a really great showcase for local food.

Meat was the first purchase of the day - some fine beef from Spaynes Hall Farm Meats based in Halstead. The beef is Red Poll, and all the other meats are rare breed. Also very tempting were the delicious Berkshire/Duroc sausages from Boxes Farm - spicey and juicy. I bagged half a dozen.

At this point, the show got distinctly avian. Polly's Parrots is a one-man band and his troupe of rescued parrots - here's the rather shy macaw. The display was wonderful. Further along was this fine ex-batt hen, looking very calm and enjoying all the attention.

And as Ian munched his pasty, this fowl group came to take a closer look.

Away from the livestock, apples were getting mashed for cider.

The cider was good but not made with cider apples, so lacked a certain subtley. But very quaffable, none the less.

The food stalls were scattered throughout the collection of barns at Cressing, and it was lovely to see the guys from Love Farm there with their excellent rapeseed oil. At the back of one of the barns, I made my first big find of the day.

Three types of cheese from Crete, imported by a brand new Essex company. The creamy sheep's myzithra was fantastically good, and I was easily persuaded to get a pot. I don't much like goat's cheese, but Ian was impressed. I do hope we get to see more of these cheeses.

I sqeaked with excitement when I saw this stall and a row of d'Arcy Spice apple juice. My favourite apple (discovered last year at Lathcoat's) and an Essex original.

My second big discovery was this red wine jelly, made in Sardinia and exported by Tre Stella. It was utterly delicious. No problem making a buy here.

By now, our bags were heaving and the weather was beginning to take on a gloomy hue. So we rang for a taxi and were lucky to get an asparagas-loving driver who swiftly conveyed us to the nearest farm shop were I bought the one desired item we didn't find at the fair. Back home, I cooked up a quick and  very late brunch of egg, smoked bacon and asparagas...

...followed by a slice of chocolate cheesecake; recipe from Jason Atherton's Gourmet Food for a Fiver. Jolly good it was too.

Thanks Ian for fine company and putting up (again) with a foodie on the rampage.

Real Food Festival 2010

I don't know if it was my election up-all-night malaise, or no Big Bro, or something in the air, but this year's Real Food Festival seemed to lack the buzz of last year's. Maybe it's just that working an all-nighter makes me tireder than it used to. Anyway, I felt like snucking into the Laverstock piglets' pen and cuddling up to them. Petal the buffalo was also fast asleep.

The first bit of food to tempt me was this fine Nordic cheese - I bought a hunk of the tasty prast which had a lovely depth of flavour. I don't seem to have taken many photos this year either, but other cheese that I loved was a yummy Cornish Blue and a very impressive Old Winchester, from Lyburn cheeses in the New Forest.

I loved the design on these oil gift sets from Nudo oils and I thought the mandarin flavoured oil was lovely - not overly sweet but a real blast of citrus oil as a top taste note. I came away clutching a tiny tin.

Up to this point, I'd been wandering around without a catalogue, feeling slightly grumpy at having to fork out a fiver for one. But I needed a map, so wandered back, passing this glorious display of baklava.

There were quite a few bigger brands at the fair, but one I didn't mind buying from was Denhay's, as I've been buying their bacon for an age. And it was good to see Tracklements - I can remember buying their mustard 30 years ago when they were Urchfont Tracklements.

Weirdly, my find of the show was a rapeseed oil.

John and Tom are two brothers who have just started making oil at Love Farm in Suffolk. It's a beautiful oil, and the nuttiest rapeseed oil I've tasted. Their website doesn't seem to be up yet, but I told them to get on to Twitter and they have! Follow them at @love_farm. Good luck boys!

After three hours, I staggered off home, and unpacked my goodies, including three super puds from Burtree Puddings, a favourite from last year, and a jar of my beloved date and tamarind chutney from Anila. A great haul, and I'm only sorry that my post-election malaise meant I didn't last for longer.

Superb seafood safari

The sky is clear, spring is in the air: what better than a trip up to Suffolk for a seafood safari, run by Polly of  Food Safari. We all met up at the qauyside shop of Pinney's of Orford, to be greeted by Polly and a very tempting array of Suffolk goodies.

Orford is a beautiful town but for the first couple of hours, we viewed it from on board Peter's small fishing boat. The coast here is a complicated mixture of river, creeks and islands; both the Ore and the Alde flow past the town, so it's still a working port though not the sea port of the 12th century.  We were heading down the Ore estuary, towards Havergate island.

Peter gave a running commentary about the landscape, then halted the boat to sort out the gill net.

A thoroughly sustainable method of fishing, this net catches fish of the right size by trapping them by the gills. Peter and his sidekick, the silent Gazza, manoeuvred the net into position across the flow of the river.

Then it was time to haul up the lobster pots: the first time they'd seen the surface since last autumn. Peter wasn't very hopeful about seeing any lobsters - it's been a chilly spring for them and they've been slow to wake up from their winter slumbers. But we were lucky...

Peter whisked this lobster upside down to show us that it was a female - it's all a matter of feathery undergarments. But this lady was too small to be a keeper, so she was returned to the deep. Unluckier was this big crab, who was destined for the plate.

We returned to the gill net and hauled in a few herrings, sparklingly fresh. Then it was back to the quayside, and we stopped to admire a load of line-caught cod, landed by an Irish boat. They were being packed off for sale at Ipswich. Our minivan arrived and we headed off to meet Bill Pinney, who's carrying on his family's tradition of rearing oysters and running the smokehouse.

Bill had been dredging for oysters and showed us the different kinds and sizes. His family also runs two fishing boats, and he has strong veiws about our fish stocks: there is plenty of cod out there, he says, and the big problem now is the quota that small fishing vessels are allowed. It seems we're looking after the big fishing enterprises but not the small sustainable ones. So it is okay to eat line-caught cod...especially if you can trace who caught it. Next, we had a look round the wonderfully scented smoke house.

The fish is smoked over whole oak logs, and hanging up here is salmon, trout, eel and mackeral. Yum. By now, I was ravenous. I was ready to eat oak logs if neccessary...but the minibus turned up and it was back to Orford again, to Bill's Butlery Orford Oysterage in the town square.

We were soon facing a fantastic platter of smoked goodies. The smoked prawns and eel were my favourites, and the mustard sauce was a perfect accompaniment. After the main course, there was a chance to try your hand at carving salmon and opening oysters: the two lads who'd come with their restuarant owning parents were clear winners here. Then the puds arrived: a superb sticky toffee sponge for me, and an equally good lemon sponge for others.

The lovely Tony and Susan, who'd ferried me from the station in the morning, very kindly offered to take me back, so there was a chance to pop back to Pinney's shop and stock up on smoked salmon, a lovely fish pate and some of that mustard sauce. All in all, a wonderful day with great company, and a real insight into the production of one of our finest British foods.

Many thanks to Polly, and to Tony and Susan.

In praise of Abel and Cole

 I arrived home the other night and as cast a glance behind the hedge to check on my Abel and Cole veggie box, which gets delivered during the day. This week, for the first time ever, there was nothing. No veggie box. No eggs. No woolly box with my cream in it. No loo rolls. Nothing. But the delivery had clearly been made - I found the invoice on my doormat.  Some local toerag must have made off with my week's supply of green goodness. I rang Abel and Cole just to check when the delivery had been made...and explained to the lovely Lex what had happened. 'We'll refund your account,' he said. I protested: you musn't do that - it's not your fault that my box got nicked - we argued back and forth but Lex was insistant. So I have my money back. I call that absolutely amazing customer service. Thank you Lex and Abel and Cole!

Review: New Urban Farmer

Celia Brooks Brown already has a favoured place on my cookery book shelves thanks to her excellent World Vegetarian Classics. Now her Times online column has sprouted into the handsome New Urban Farmer, which follows the gardening and eating year on her north London allotment. It's the latest in the burgeoning  genre of veg-growing/cookery books, and while some may not like this hybrid, I think Brooks Brown has come up with one of the best.

The books starts conventionally - and sensibly - with the early spring and the excitement of the first sowings of the year. Brooks Brown's enthusiasm for the rhythms of allotment life is beautifully captured, both in her writing and the fine photographs by Jill Mead. Each seasonal section is full of advice on growing and harvesting, and for those who don't have the joy of an allotment, there are great tips about what can be grown in containers. A useful chart of what to sow and harvest follows each chapter.

Recipes can be the downfall of the gardening/cookery hybrid but not here: Brooks Brown is too good a cook. I'll be making pea and feta  egg cups and the rhubarb and lentil curry as soon as I can, and the soy glazed runner beans with cashews may pursuade me to fall back in love with this over-abundant legume.

As a reasonably experienced veg grower I didn't find much that was startlingly new - until I read about the Mauritian idea of cooking courgette leaves. Brooks Brown tried it and loved it.

The one thing I missed was information about vegetable varieties - cucumber Burpless Tasty Green and Swiss chard Bright Lights get a name check, but that's about it. Nevertheless, this is a book I'll return to throughout the year, and it would make a fine gift for a hungry allotmenteer.

New Urban Farmer by Celia Brooks Brown

Quadrille £14.99

Dorset delight 3

Last Monday we had a wonderful walk from Lulworth Cove, past Durdle Door then inland via one of Dorset's many caravan sites. Ever since arriving in the county, we'd been amazed at how nice people were, and we decided that these so-called caravan sites were actually re-education camps for people who weren't nice.

After our hike, we returned to the bay to soak in the sun and get our faces round the excellent Purbeck ice creams. This being a holiday, I had a serious chocolate with a scoop of clotted cream on top. J went for the Honeycombe Hash. Very very good.

Our roast on Sunday evening was a lovely chicken from Washingpool Farm - it did a fine job of furnishing us with two suppers, a lunchtime noodle salad and stock for a rissotto at the end of the week. Lamb wasn't on the menu, but we did admire this cutey in a field on the way into Lyme. The kerbside was awash with the first wild garlic leaves.

By midweek, we were running low on bread and on a visit to Weymouth we were thrilled to stumble on Aidan Chapman's Phoenix Bakery.

The yeasty smells in the shop were fantastic, and we picked up a warm loaf of sunflower seeds and spelt. Perfect for J who's not eating wheat at the moment. It really was a fantastic loaf, and stayed moist until it was all gobbled up. Aidan runs a bakery school - now that's a seriously good reason to return to Dorset.

The other brilliant bakers that I already knew about is Leakers, in Bridport, where Aidan used to work. We did visit it was were on our way home - my cider and cheese loaf got nibbled all the way back to Tottenham, and the apple cake was a natural with clotted cream.
All in all, we had a brilliant time. Food, weather and people all great, and I've fallen in love with Dorset. I hope I can return soon.

Dorset delight 2

Whenever J and I go on holiday abroad, we always expect a cat to turn up. They know when they see a soft touch. But we hadn't expected to attract one in Dorset. Until Butt Head arrived in a record ten minutes. He came in each evening to lie by the fire.

Our first shop of the hols was at nearby Washingpool Farm Shop, which stocked a fabulous range of local produce, plus some brilliant seasonal treats like blood oranges. I nabbed some rhubarb to roast with the juice of an orange and sugar. We also bought some excellent sheep's cheese from the Wootton Dairy in next-door Somerset. Then we settled down to lunch at the excellent cafe - smoked mackeral salad for J and a cheese and spinach souffle for me. Tasty and just the thing after a long drive.

Our first whole day was gloriously sunny, and we ended up walking from Seatown, over Golden Cap, down to the beach for Charmouth and then inland to Lyme Regis. The views from the top of Golden Cap were amazing.

And here's the view the other way, looking over to Lyme and Charmouth.

We had a good nose round Lyme, and soon saw signs for a new cheeseshop. After clambering down to the Town Mill, we found it.

The Town Mill Cheesemonger has a fantastic array of cheeses, and specialises in West Country products.

We were on a bit of a sheeps' cheese binge, so we scooped up some Beenleigh Blue and a wonderful cheese from Northumberland whose name I've mislaid. It's a lovely shop and it's now on our list of 'must visits' at Lyme.

Lyme has lots of signs up warning you against fraternising with gulls, but I love the vandals. They just don't care, and why should they.

Dorset delight 1

A week in Dorset is surely one of the best treats a girl could wish for - J and I had a superb week of walking and eating in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. Lulworth Cove, past Durdle Door and then inland was our Monday walk: this is the view from one of the roller coaster uphill stretches.

We  hoped that one of the highlights of the week would be our visit to The Wild Garlic at Beaminster. Last year I watched Mat win Masterchef and loved his take on seafood and the wild larder, so I'd booked a table as soon as I'd secured our holiday cottage.

After three days of hearty walking, we arrived in the town sqaure to find The Wild Garlic beaming a warm welcome. Once inside, we settled down at our beautiful oak table and guzzled on the bread which arrived with hemp oil and wasabi peas.

Choosing what to eat wasn't too difficult although I was torn for a moment between the sardines and the smoked eel salad - but the wild garlic mayo with the sardines clinched it. J went with a butternut squash salad with mixed cheeses.

It looked beautiful, served with primrose flowers and different cresses. J got a dreamy look on her face and declared it wonderful.

My sardines came with sprigs of samphire. The combination of the fish, salty greens and mayonaisse was superb. The mayo was so good I could easily have eaten a whole bucket of it. So far, so very good: this was on track to be one of the best meals I've had in the past 18 months.

Next to turn up was an unexpected amuse bouche of lightly cured brill, capers and pea shoots - absolutely lovely, and set us up for the baked brill which we'd both ordered for our mains.

'Brill city,' said our waiter, placing an enourmous platter in front of each of us. The brill was cooked perfectly - a  moist and melting flesh contrasted with an insanely tasty crispy skin and the drizzle of caper and lemon butter sauce. I never thought that brill skin would be one of my favourite things to eat, but it is now. J and I went quite silent as we munched our way through the fish. A superb dish. Did we have room for a dessert? You betcha.

J went for the chocolate tart with blood orange sorbet, and about halfway through, declared that it was one of the best puddings she's ever had. I'd gone for the citrus burnt cream - yes, it's a creme brulee but I liked the insistance on the vernacular.

It was wonderful, with the hint of citrus just holding at bay the unctiousness of the cream. By this point, we were well and truly bowled over by the meal. Not  just by the individual courses but by the way the meal developed so that it was impossible to say which course we'd prefered. All in all, bloody fantastic food.

It has been a great evening - the only slight criticism we could make was that the waiting staff haven't yet quite developed those super sensitive antennae that tell them when a glass of wine is missing. But they were a very friendly and welcoming bunch. And it was lovely to see the restuarant full on a weekday evening. Mat wandered out as we were leaving and J grabbed a handshake and told him how much we'd enjoyed it.

Next time I'm watching Masterchef and groaning at the voice-overs, I'll remember to be grateful that it produced such a fine winner.

So if you're in Dorset - or even if you're not - The Wild Garlic is a wonderful place to eat with the seasons.